Little did we know that the day the HFP went to press, Tuesday, August 4, was the last day of the calm before the storm that would come to be known as Black August. On Wednesday, Black Panther "minister of defense" Huey Newton was found not guilty of voluntary manslaughter in his third trial on the charge, and released. On Friday, the Marin County courthouse erupted in gunfire when the "Soledad brothers" trial was invaded in an escape attempt that left three defendants and the judge dead and a witness and prosecutor critically wounded. But in the momentary peace of that sweltering Los Angeles Tuesday, we printed the twenty-first issue of our little paper.

Dale Yancy's cartoon of a deliriously happy surfer about to crash into one of the pilings of the pier, pictured at right, was an unintentionally apt metaphor for the naive innocence many Americans were still living in during the summer of 1970, even after several years of daily doses of revolution and the horrors of Vietnam on television. "No one can top this ride," Yancy's cartoon surfer boasts, "now I'm #1 at 22nd Street, what more do I need?" 22nd Street was a popular surfing spot just north of the Hermosa Beach pier near the infamous Green Store; the location was made famous by Sixties surf legend Dewey Weber and his 22nd Street Gang, a clique of talented South Bay surfers known for their "dress code" of Levis, blue t-shirts, blue tennis shoes, and St. Christopher medals around their neck.

Capitol Records had just released Larry Norman's groundbreaking album "Upon this Rock", an LP hailed by some as the most original rock release since the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper", but which 23-year-old Norman described simply as twelve love songs to Jesus. An interview with Norman, with a nearly half-page photo of the artist in concert, appeared on page 3.

Our news and listings sections, "Earth Tremors" and "The Wall", were filled with Jesus gatherings, concerts, baptisms, churches-in-the-park and more, from Venice Beach to the suburbs of Pomona, and from the hippie wilderness of Topanga Canyon to an old gingerbread Victorian house near Whittier College. The upstairs Friday night teach-ins in Hollywood were continuing, Love Song, Andrae Crouch and Norman had concerts planned, and a new crisis hotline had been established for young people facing drug and suicide issues. The Jesus Movement was continuing to grow, popping up unexpectedly in both the most and the least likely places.